The Antiquated Second Amendment

A few days ago, in Goon Staat, we wrote

"The Kevlar-encased thugs on the streets of Portland feel no social kinship with the people they are "containing."  They wouldn't think twice about breaking your wrist or shooting your grandma"

No more than a day later, a video showing a goon smashing a man's hand was all over the media.

Your read it here first.  You might also have foreseen it in  2002 when I wrote,

The images we see in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq today are a foretaste of the Homeland tomorrow. It will be so.

But it is now time to look back 

In 1775, General Gage took control of Boston and bade the inhabitants of that good town to turn in their arms.  A response published in the Evening Post on 23 June, read

"What terms do you hold out in this gracious proclamation?  ... Are you not ashamed to throw out such an insult upon human understanding, as to bid people disarm themselves till you and your butchers murder and plunder at pleasure?

"Opposing an arbitary measures or resisting an illegal force is no more rebellion that to refuse obedience to a highway-man ... or to fight a wild beast...  It is morally lawful, in all limited governments to resist that force that wants political power, from the petty constable to the king. .. THEY are rebels who arm against the constitution, not they who defend it by arms."

Fast forward to 1787 when the newly independent insurrectionists were now seeking to frame their Constitution. They were no less suspicious of their newly formed central government than they were of General Gage.  Strong opposition coalesced against a strong central government. The fear was that it would tyrannize the sovereignty of the States and the freedoms of the people.  The answer of the Federalists was simple: there was nothing to fear because the people would always retain their arms.

“My friends and countrymen,  THE POWERS OF THE SWORD ARE IN THE HANDS OF THE YEOMANRY OF AMERICA FROM SIXTEEN TO SIXTY  The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves?  Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an Americam  [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the foederal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands ofthe people.3   (“A Pennsylvanian" (Tench Coxe), To The People of the United States, Pa. Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.)

Madison also rejected fears of a federal standing army, because, he said, to a regular army "would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands." Madison lauded "the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.

 So too Noah Webster, who wrote, that "[b]efore a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."  (An Examination Into The Leading Principles Of The Federal Constitution (Oct. 16, 1787). The Philadelphia Federal Gazette, summed it up.

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people, duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which shall be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."   (Fed. Gazette (Phila.), June 16, 1789,

Liberals adverse to guns, which they believe to be the cause of violence, have long sought to massage the Second Amendment out of existence.  “Militia,” they say, meant today's National Guard.  The very phrasing of the argument reveals its anachronism.  In 18th century America, the militia was much more akin to yahoos running around in the forest shooting weapons in camies than it was to a National Guard.  Both raising a militia and raising the hue and cry were fairly informal and spontaneous popular actions.  What assembled on the greens at Lexington and Concord was not a government organized body of troops but a self-forming group of armed men resolved on a common purpose...which in that case could be labeled “obstruction of government.”

Liberals have also spared no effort declaiming against the necessity for bearing arms.  The “omnipresent teacher of us all” (Brandeis, J. in Olmstead v. United States), will provide for our safety without the need for us to be armed.  Government good. Anarchy bad.  It is absolutely the case that government can be the beneficent teacher and provider of us all, when it reflects the popular will and strives for the common good.   But to say that government can be a force for good is not to say that it will be so. 

This argument has played out in other contexts as well.  The liberal Justice Breyer is all in favour of allowing fair, impartial and wise judges to craft the “appropriate” sentence in any case as they, in their wisdom, best see fit. Justice Scalia saw otherwise,

"I feel the need to say a few words in response to JUSTICE BREYER's dissent.

"In JUSTICE BREYER's bureaucratic realm of perfect equity ...  the facts that determine the length of sentence to which the defendant is exposed will be determined to exist (on a "more likely than not" basis) by a single employee of the State. It is certainly arguable (JUSTICE BREYER argues it) that this sacrifice of prior protections is worth it. But it is not arguable that, just because one thinks it is a better system, it must be, or is even more likely to  be, the system envisioned by a Constitution that guarantees trial by jury.

"Justice Breyer sketches an admirably fair and efficient scheme of criminal justice designed for a society that is prepared to leave criminal justice to the State. (Judges, it is sometimes necessary to remind ourselves, are part of the State -- and an increasingly bureaucratic part of it, at that.) The founders of the American Republic were not prepared to leave it to the State, which is why the jury trial guarantee was one of the least controversial provisions of the Bill of Rights. It never been efficient, but it has always been free."

Needless to say, Justice Breyer is also in favour of gun control; the more drastic the better.  “Just leave law and order to us!  We will do it better.  We will do it fairer. We will do it cheaper! cough. 

But the founders of the American Republic were not prepared to leave it to the State...at least not without hedging their bets.  They were not fools.  They recognized that government was needed to raise and provide armies for the national defence.  They realized that government was needed to do many things necessary for the regulation and improvement of society.  But they also recognized that abuse is implicit in all power; and that most oppressive is the abuse resorted to by General Gage when he demanded that the citizens of Boston disarm themselves and trust his troops to do the right thing.  

   

What we see in Portland today is exactly what the people of the country feared back in 1788.  A madman on the loose tyrannizing citizens with thuggish armed force.  What one wonders would the response have been from the citizens of Lexington and Concord?  Liberals will decry resort to force.  But who is resorting?

Liberals will cavil that guns and rifles are no match for military hardware.  But in so saying they fail to view the Second Amendment through the lens of the time in which it was written.  As recognized by Justice McReynolds in  United States v. Miller (1939), the Amendment guarantees the right to possess arms “suitable for military use.”  Whatever the military possessed, the citizens had the right to keep and bear as well. 

Of course, the Drafters could not envision armoured tanks, jet fighters and missiles and it is in fact impossible for an individual to “keep” any of these things because their maintenance and operation requires more than a single person.  But the fact that an imbalance exists does not mean one should make the imbalance even greater by totally disarming the citizenry.  The plain fact is that if the citizens of Portland shot back at Trump's Thugs they would think twice about breaking people's wrists. 

The wail will be raised that I am envisioning “chaos” and  a “breakdown” of society.  To which I answer that society has already broken down.  It is cowardly to ignore the obvious.  It broke down a long time ago when the government back in 1981 decided to militarize the police.  Why was that decision made?  Because the government (although it of course disavowed it) regarded the people as a “potential enemy.”  Once that regard is adopted liberté, égalité and fraternité cease to exist.

 ©wcg 2020